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You don't think the causality goes the other direction for high-density downtown neighborhoods? Lots of people want to live and work downtown (for a variety o

You don't think the causality goes the other direction for high-density downtown neighborhoods? Lots of people want to live and work downtown (for a variety of reasons). When thousands of people are will to pay a premium to be within the same square mile it suddenly becomes possible to cover the massive cost of building a steel frame high-rise tower. If density itself increased property values then you could buy a few acres of ranch land in Montana for five hundred dollars, build a high-rise and rake in profit. Density is a trailing indicator of demand to live or work in some particular place. It's that demand that pushes up prices. Of course, in some particular cases where some parcel of vacant urban land had been zoned at low density and then suddenly became up-zoned to allow higher density then its value can go up as a result. It had been able to allow maybe just a $2.5 million single-family home, but now it's possible to build an apartment building worth $60 million, so of course the price would go up.

HillaryBriss 9y ago
i live in LA and my take is that people in single family dwelling residential blocks often resist construction of higher density buildings because quality of life goes down (i.e. more cars on the streets, more smog, traffic, noise, unfamiliar people, potential crime, less access to government resources like schools and law enforcement, per capita, because those resources are not built out as fast as population growth in LA). so, the proposal becomes: if these new zoning changes allow apartments on your block, you'll reap a 200% gain if you sell your house today, but you'll immediately lose backyard privacy, quiet streets, sunshine in parts of your yard, easy access to the freeway, and so your enjoyment of life will decrease and you'll have less free time outside of work, etc my take is simply that a lot of people think the price increase isn't high enough. if they want to keep their existing job in LA, where are they going to move to with that 200%? now, if the number were 2000% instead of 200% maybe zoning changes would be uncontroversial...
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  But you have to remember that for that every home owner whose quality of life diminishes there are 100's of renters whose quality of life increases because they can live in a neighborhood they wouldn't have previously been able to afford.
  - hulahoof 9y ago
    For a majority of cases if the original home owners hadn't settled and allow infrastructure to mature around their investments then the density would likely not have increased to the point where re-zoning was viable. (At least that's the pattern I see in Australia, where we are at a much lower density across the board)

HillaryBriss 9y ago

i live in LA and my take is that people in single family dwelling residential blocks often resist construction of higher density buildings because quality of life goes down (i.e. more cars on the streets, more smog, traffic, noise, unfamiliar people, potential crime, less access to government resources like schools and law enforcement, per capita, because those resources are not built out as fast as population growth in LA). so, the proposal becomes: if these new zoning changes allow apartments on your block, you'll reap a 200% gain if you sell your house today, but you'll immediately lose backyard privacy, quiet streets, sunshine in parts of your yard, easy access to the freeway, and so your enjoyment of life will decrease and you'll have less free time outside of work, etc my take is simply that a lot of people think the price increase isn't high enough. if they want to keep their existing job in LA, where are they going to move to with that 200%? now, if the number were 2000% instead of 200% maybe zoning changes would be uncontroversial...

JamesBarney 9y ago
But you have to remember that for that every home owner whose quality of life diminishes there are 100's of renters whose quality of life increases because they can live in a neighborhood they wouldn't have previously been able to afford.
- hulahoof 9y ago
  For a majority of cases if the original home owners hadn't settled and allow infrastructure to mature around their investments then the density would likely not have increased to the point where re-zoning was viable. (At least that's the pattern I see in Australia, where we are at a much lower density across the board)